“N.Z. INDUSTRY IS COVERING TOO WIDE A FIELD”

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 October 1946, Page 6

“N.Z. INDUSTRY IS COVERING TOO WIDE A FIELD”

“We are short of everything, yet we are working a smaller number of hours per man. In addition, in trying to establish new industries we are spreading our efforts over a much wider field—in fact over too wide a field while we have less man-hours available to do the .job.”

So opines Mr. Perry (Hamilton) who acted as Dominion president of Federated Farmers during the absence of the president, Mr. B. V. Cooksley, and who reports on the federation's activities to the annual conference. “There is no reason why as a policy, New Zealand should not adopt the 4i«-hour week universally, but if we de so we must do it with our eyes open, and we must not try to run away from some of the unpleasant facts connected with its adoption. “The first, is that production, both primary and secondary, must be less if all of us are doing less work. In the second place, we must realise that we are acting most selfishly, and most ungratefully so far as Britain is concerned.

“We must also be prepared to face up to the fact that in adopting a shorter working week we are going to make it increasingly difficult to keep in occupation the 30,000,000 acres of poorer land or can we replace it with other production which will >;eld a comparable return for the labour and capital involved?

“I do not think so, and I submit that it is for those people who advocate the lesser effort to prove that this can be done. “It is a fallacy to suggest that machinery can provide for a difference in Ihe hours worked for two reasons. Firstly, because there is very little large scale enterprise in New Zealand and where there is shift work round the clock is not in common practice.

“Secondly, a very great proportion of our farming js pastoral farming where the machine is of very little use. No machine has yet been invented which can ride round ewes and lamb them, nor has any machine yet been invented which will feed cows, or which will muster sheep. These are points which it would be well for the Dominion as a whole to remember.”